Berserktown Will Destroy Other Music Festivals

The DIY and hardcore punks of Los Angeles are being hunted down like wild game. In May, The Church on York was shut down, followed shortly thereafter by DTLA's East 7th venue. Thankfully, they've both begun booking shows at Los Globos.

East 7th and the Church are now channeling their chaos into a new event, which could be the city's most primal gathering of street kids, punks, and underground music freaks yet: Berserktown Fest.

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Held at Los Globos this weekend, August 15-17 (the schedule is below), Berserktown will feature everything from the calculated rage of Western Mass's Hoax, to the exorcism of noise from New York's Pharmakon, and for the first time on the West Coast, New York's hardcore cavemen, Dawn of Humans.

Berserktown is a rare gathering of underground music covering powerviolence (Seattle duo Iron Lung are headliners), noise, extreme hardcore, and first-wave L.A. punk bands like the Weirdos and the Zeros. They join all the original members of A Global Threat, as well as hardcore pioneers Final Conflict on a lineup that is as diverse as it is freakish. The bass player of L.A.'s Blazing Eye, for instance, wears a leather bondage mask while he pummels his instrument. That's simply PG-13, however, compared to Emil Bognar-Nasdor of Dawn of Humans (their lead singer), who paints his naked body black and plays with his other instrument.

Add in Barcelona's Una Bèstia Incontrolable along with a slew of SoCal punk bands — like Tozcos and NASA Space Universe — and Berserktown is going to be downright anarchic. Expect an equal embrace of destruction and creation: while Pharmakon makes noisy performance art, violence is the currency for Boston's Green Beret.

Not to hype it too much, but you can probably expect Berserktown to be L.A.'s most combustible and creative music festival of the year.

Full schedule below

Mexico hardcore band Tercer Mundo will be playing a Berserktown punk art gallery on Thursday, August 14 at Superchief Gallery | 739 Kohler St., Downtown L.A.

Art is a rock and pop culture critic. He's both gonzo journalist and investigative reporter. He doesn't drink craft coffee, and enjoys a regular lunch at Canter's Deli. You can find him at a Starbucks (or the mahogany benches at Union Station) writing about Guns N' Roses and young Hollywood. Background: Art interned for Tom Cruise in 2006. However, he is not a card-carrying member of the Church of Scientology. If you listen to KCRW, or brew your own beer, then Art Tavana will confuse you.